North-East Interface: Ethnographic Reading of the Hidden Land

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to explore the general and demographic overview of North East India pertaining to ethnicity and ethnic set up. There is no other part in the country which is more diverse to us than the entire North East and it’s not some small corners of India, it spreads over 2.6 lakh square kilometres, larger than hundred sixteen nations of the world and inhabited by more than two hundred fascinating communities largely originated from Caucasoid, Mongoloids and Australoids. They also show an ethno-cultural bridging with the neighbouring countries of South East Asia. This region has more than four hundred languages and dialects representing each and every ethnic community with Assamese as a ‘lingua-franca^’. North East is also home to more than seventy five percent languages belonging to the four language families i.e. - Indo-Aryan, Tibeto-Burman, Austro-Asiatic and Dravidian. To find four language families in such a place is really incredible and could be well regarded as a linguistic area. The phenomenal rise and growth of multi-ethnic identities in this kaleidoscopic land presents the picture of the possibilities of exploring the human scrapes, its culture, demography and above all the ‘ethnic way of life’ (Biswas and Suklabaidya,)  with the view of imagining an inside of thinking. It further tries to widen the socio-political and philosophical imaginations of the ‘nation from below’ (Biswas and Suklabaidya, 231). Also ethnography sets an agenda to explore the cultural position of ethnic groups lost in the universalist mapping of humanity.